JPs back spending $1M on crisis center

Site still unclear for Pulaski County’s effort to steer mentally ill away from jail

A million dollars was unanimously appropriated Tuesday by the Pulaski County Quorum Court in an ongoing effort to steer the mentally ill away from incarceration and toward mental health treatment.

The money, taken from the Capital Maintenance and Technology Fund, will pay startup costs for the county’s crisis stabilization center. When operational, the 16-bed facility will treat people in the midst of a mental health crisis who were transported there by local law enforcement agencies.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson championed the centers as a way to serve mentally ill Arkansans and cut costs at county jails.

As it stands, Arkansas ranks among the lowest states in the nation in access to public psychiatric beds, about 7.5 per 100,000 people, according to 2016 data analyzed by the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center.

Three crisis centers were approved by Act 423 of 2017. A fourth center was added in August when the governor said he’d seek $1.4 million on top of the $5 million already budgeted.

Pulaski, Sebastian, Craighead and Washington counties were chosen to sponsor the facilities for their surrounding regions. Those counties will foot utility bills and find the building, while the state will defray operation costs.

Nov. 15 was the original start date chosen by state officials,

though that timeline was extended, as no county facility will be operational by then.

Pulaski County’s center will serve Faulkner, Garland, Grant, Lonoke, Perry and Saline counties, an area that contains more than 700,000 people.

As of Tuesday’s meeting, no deal has been signed on the permanent location, said Justin Blagg, director of Quorum Court services.

A temporary facility was proposed on the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock campus. Those plans halted after administrators realized inpatient psychiatric beds would have to be sacrificed to make it work.

A county-owned building at 3001 W. Roosevelt Road could accommodate the permanent center, Blagg said. The structure used to be a hospital and houses the county’s juvenile detention center.

The $1 million would be used to renovate that space, though the county is still in a “back and forth” on a few other locations that need less construction, Blagg said.

In preparing for the crisis center, county officials examined a group of people who often bounced in and out of the Pulaski County jail.

About 1,500 people were booked into jail three or more times between August 2016 and August 2017, said county attorney Chastity Scifres. Of those people, around 370 were diagnosed at the jail with a serious mental illness.

In an extreme case, one person was locked up 35 times.

“Those are high numbers. Those are obviously people who are cycling through the system quite frequently,” Scifres said.

Those figures don’t include people arrested on lesser charges, like public intoxication, who were released before they were assessed by Turn Key Health, the jail’s medical provider.

When the center is operational, participating law enforcement agencies will take patients, with their consent, to the facility. People can’t be sent from the jail, and walk-ins aren’t allowed.

An officer trained in crisis intervention must come across a potential patient, who must be an adult, during a shift. Displaying suicidal tendencies is one criterion for admission, as is showing “disordered or bizarre behavior,” according to the proposal submitted in mid-September by County Judge Barry Hyde’s office.

Once admitted, a patient will typically stay less than 72 hours. In that time, the person will be assessed by a health care professional.

The patient will be screened for drugs and can undergo a psychiatric consultation. Medication is available if a patient needs it, the proposal says.

Social workers will also try to link people with community services for ongoing help.

Once operational, crisis centers are required to collect all sorts of data — like how many people they see, the conditions they present, and the number of indigent and homeless people they serve.

Analyzing and reckoning with that data will be “transformative,” Blagg said. And data is one of several ways to log a center’s influence on the community it serves and justify the tax dollars, Scifres said.

As for locating the permanent center, negotiations are “still fluid,” Blagg said.

Still, Tuesday’s vote to appropriate

the money was a big step, he said.

With money on the table, “that shows we’re getting ready to start moving bricks,” Blagg said.